The Sorby Centre for Electron Microscopy A guide for supervisors. Section 1: Including costs for electron microscopy on a grant application If you are putting together a grant proposal, it is very important to understand that Sorby Centre costs go under the Directly Allocated heading. The Appendix at the end of this document explains how to do this on the URMs system. In the drop-down menu, all you need to do is enter the access time you need to particular types of microscope. All the URMs entries are Electron microscopy Sorby xyz, where xyz is one of: SEM hrs for standard scanning electron imaging, including EDS or CL, charged at 30/hr. TEM hrs for standard transmission electron microscopy (imaging and EDS), charged at 25/hr. FIB hours for Focused Ion Beam milling, charged at 35/hr High Resolution FEGSTEM (JEOL 2010) for high-resolution TEM with EDS or electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS), charged at 45/hr (don t ask about the 0.01!). Aberration Corrected TEM/STEM (R005), Ultra High resolution TEM/STEM with EDS an EELS, charged at 60/hr. Supported Aberration Corrected (R005), means that the microscope is operated on your behalf by an Experimental Officer, charged at 95/hr. The new Helios microscope, charged at 60/hr. (Important: these prices apply only for Internal Users from within the University of Sheffield) Our usual model is for RAs or PhD students to learn to use the microscope themselves. You will need to allow at least 4hrs training on SEM, 3-6 sessions for TEM, and as much as 32 hours for using the high-end microscopes (although a user would normally be expected to learn on a lower end machine to begin with). Note that you can include access charges for PhD students or RAs in your group if they will contribute directly to the project you are submitting, even if their fees/maintenance/salary are not covered by the proposal itself, provided you include this in the justification of resources. If you only plan to do a small amount of EM, it may be quicker and ultimately more economic to pay for all the data collection (on whatever
microscope) to be done by the Sorby Centre Experimental Officers. To do this, include 35/hr costs under the OTHER heading in Directly Allocated costs (see end of Appendix 1). Specimen preparation facilities are free if they are being used to prepare samples for paid access to the Sorby microscopes. If you want to use our preparation facilities for other reasons, please contact the Director for prices. If in doubt about any of the above, contact the Director (J.M.Rodenburg@shef.ac.uk). Section 2: For those who have funding, but did not include Directly Allocated costs for electron microscopy in their proposal If you accidentally or unwittingly entered substantial costs for electron microscopy or other facility services under Consumables (Directly Incurred) on an RCUK grant application, please contact the Director. If you have funding, but at the outset of your project you did not anticipate needing any electron microscopy, you can pay for access out of the consumables budget. However, if you need a substantial amount of work to be done (100s of hours of microscope access), please contact the Director. Section 3: For those who don t have funding for access charges Free access to the facilities is justified under certain circumstances. Please fill out an UNFUNDED ACCESS FORM. See link from: http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/electron-microscopy/materials
Appendix: how to enter EM costs into the Costing Tool (If you are still using URMs, see next page) Under UoS Facilities, add a resource: the above screen will appear. On the Facility Name drop down menu, select the microscope you need to use under Electron Microscopy ***. (When it comes to running the project itself, you will have flexibility in what microscope you use, but not in the total funds awarded). Once you enter the number of units (in sessions in the above example, 2hr sessions), the cost will be calculated automatically. If you need an EO to run the microscope for you, add 35/hr for each microscope hour you have requested under the OTHER heading (see above).
For URMS users: Open your project proposal in URMS > Find Project Costs Tab Click Non-Staff Costs, the screen opens to a menu of non-staff categories and project years.
Click field related to Major Facilities category in Project year. Click the small black arrow at the end of the input field A menu of facility rates will appear.
Once the correct facility is selected, input units manually (hours). Things to remember Rates are calculated on an annual basis in October loaded onto URMS during February Use new project proposals when costing projects so the correct rates are reflected in the menu
If you are using an old costing previous years rates will have populated the costing, you may need to scroll in the menu for the correct rate for the financial year. Or use a new costing proposal. If you are using a facility not yet listed in the URMS menu, OR you want to include operator costs), scroll to OTHER MISCELLANEOUS facilities rate 1 GBP in the facilities menu (see below). This ensures the proposal reflects a Directly Allocated budget for a facility. A facility charge is an internal charge and therefore should be always be classed as a DA charge